Internet websites like Selfiecity, Selfieresearchers, and 365 Feminist Selfie mostly focus on how an audience receives and "reads"  the selfie. In this respect, they rightly treat the selfie as a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon. However, we believe that the selfie should also be seen as a composition act. Often, since taking a selfie is an almost instantaneous action, we overlook the fact that even such an instantaneous activity requires a certain degree of brainstorming, composing, and revising--even though these stages might happen at a subconscious level.

 

With Self[ie] Awareness we want to focus on the selfie as an utterance that participates in rhetorical discourse, and thus we attempt to apply the discursive categories we inherit from classical rhetoric--forensic, epideictic, and deliberative--to a visual text. We stand by the idea that composition is inherent in any communication act, no matter how quick and automatic that act is. Therefore, our aim is to include in the field of composition studies the apparently inconsequential action of taking a picture of ourselves. We view the selfie as a multimodal platform contributing to the rhetorical ends of argumentation, specifically engaging in a composer's ethical appeal--how people skillfully present their character to an audience.

 

The field of composition studies is increasingly inviting students to compose multimodal texts and to exploit the possibilities of new media platforms. We participate in that discussion, offering students a novel possibility to gain awareness of how they contribute to self-representation, argumentation, and meaning making.

 

Please visit our About page to know more about the rhetoric behind Self[ie] Awareness.